BIROn - Birkbeck Institutional Research Online

    Memory in the Renaissance and Early Modern period

    Clucas, Stephen (2015) Memory in the Renaissance and Early Modern period. In: Nikulin, D. (ed.) Memory: A History. Oxford Philosophical Concepts. New York, U.S.: Oxford University Press, pp. 131-175. ISBN 9780199793839.

    Full text not available from this repository.

    Abstract

    Book review: In recent decades, memory has become one of the major concepts and a dominant topic in philosophy, sociology, politics, history, science, cultural studies, literary theory, and the discussions of trauma and the Holocaust. In contemporary debates, the concept of memory is often used rather broadly and thus not always unambiguously. For this reason, the clarification of the range of the historical meaning of the concept of memory is a very important and urgent task. This volume shows how the concept of memory has been used and appropriated in different historical circumstances and how it has changed throughout the history of philosophy. In ancient philosophy, memory was considered a repository of sensible and mental impressions and was complemented by recollection-the process of recovering the content of past thoughts and perceptions. Such an understanding of memory led to the development both of mnemotechnics and the attempts to locate memory within the structure of cognitive faculties. In contemporary philosophical and historical debates, memory frequently substitutes for reason by becoming a predominant capacity to which one refers when one wants to explain not only the personal identity but also a historical, political, or social phenomenon. In contemporary interpretation, it is memory, and not reason, that acts in and through human actions and history, which is a critical reaction to the overly rationalized and simplified concept of reason in the Enlightenment. Moreover, in modernity memory has taken on one of the most distinctive features of reason: it is thought of as capable not only of recollecting past events and meanings, but also itself. In this respect, the volume can be also taken as a reflective philosophical attempt by memory to recall itself, its functioning and transformations throughout its own history.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Book Section
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication
    Depositing User: Stephen Clucas
    Date Deposited: 06 Oct 2015 09:06
    Last Modified: 09 Aug 2023 12:37
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/13013

    Statistics

    Activity Overview
    6 month trend
    0Downloads
    6 month trend
    542Hits

    Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.

    Archive Staff Only (login required)

    Edit/View Item
    Edit/View Item